Содзи Симада - Murder in the Crooked House

Kozaburo chuckled.

“I see. It’s just as I suspected. I’m very glad to have met someone like you. I don’t feel as if I lost. I wish I’d met you a little earlier. Life would have been far less tedious. It’s really too bad.”

We reached the top of the hill, exhaling white clouds into the frigid air, just as the morning sunshine reached the ice floes out on the northern sea. The house we had been staying in was wrapped in a cottony blanket of morning mist.

Everyone turned to the north to face the Ice Floe Mansion and its tower, which from this direction stood to the right of the main building. The glass at the top of the tower picked up the rising sun and for a moment shone with a dazzling, yellow light. Kiyoshi shaded his eyes with both hands, stood and watched the spectacle. I thought he was appreciating the aesthetics, but I was wrong. He was waiting for the sun to move off the glass. Finally, the moment arrived and he opened his mouth to speak.

“Is that a chrysanthemum?”

“Yes, it is,” said Kozaburo. “A chrysanthemum with its head hanging down.”

I had no idea what they were talking about.

“Where?” I asked.

“That glass tower. The chrysanthemum’s wilted, right?”

I finally saw it. And then there was a murmur of recognition from the three detectives.

In the glass cylinder of the tower, there was a chrysanthemum with a hanging neck. The effect was like a magnificent painted scroll. The curiously shaped flower bed around the base of the tower was reflected in the cylinder, and the whole thing was the exact image of a chrysanthemum. A colourless chrysanthemum.

“If we were in a flat place, we’d have to use a helicopter to be able to enjoy that view. If you look up at the tower from the middle of the flower bed itself, you can’t see the reflection. You have to be at a distance and diagonally above to be able to see it.”

“It was extremely fortuitous that this hill happened to be here, wasn’t it?” said Kiyoshi. “But I can see that as you were building you realized that even the very top of this hill wasn’t high enough. And so you constructed the tower so it leant very slightly in this direction. And now we can see it perfectly. That’s the real reason you built that tower at an angle, isn’t it?”

Kozaburo nodded. And in that moment the solution to the puzzle was clear even to me.

“I see! The chrysanthemum is Kikuoka! The hanging flower head is your vow to kill him.”

“I never meant to break that promise. I always intended to end up in jail one day. I hated leading that false life. But I always hoped that someone just once would be clever enough to see through that layer that surrounded me, through to the guilt of my past. So I built this tower that reflected my thoughts.

“There’s another meaning behind this design. Noma’s parents ran a flower shop. His father was famous for cultivating chrysanthemums. Before the war, he used to display dolls made entirely from chrysanthemum blooms. Noma’s plan after returning from the war was to take over from his father and grow chrysanthemums. As you know, to people of our generation the chrysanthemum was a flower that symbolized so much. At the very least this is a tribute to my friend.

“I suppose if I’m honest I would have liked to forget my promise to Noma. Perhaps if I’d been surrounded by a different kind of people, I would have been able to…”

Kozaburo broke off and gave a bitter laugh.

“Mr Mitarai, I’d like to ask you one last question. Why did you always pretend to clown around so much?”

Kiyoshi looked puzzled.

“I wasn’t pretending. That’s just my personality.”

I nodded my agreement.

“I don’t think that’s true,” said Kozaburo. “I think you were trying to get me to let my guard down. If you’d revealed right away what a sharp mind you have, I’d have been much more cautious and you’d never have been able to fool me.

“I did have a slight suspicion about you last night when Eiko began to get sleepy. I wondered for a moment whether you’d set some kind of trap. I know it sounds as if I’m talking with the benefit of hindsight, but I was suspicious. But just in case Eiko was in real danger, I couldn’t assume anything at the time.”

Kozaburo Hamamoto stopped and regarded Kiyoshi quietly.

“By the way, what do you think of my daughter, Eiko?”

Kiyoshi considered for a moment.

“She’s a great pianist; a very well-educated young lady,” he said carefully.

“Hmm. And…?”

“She’s also very self-centred and egotistical. Rather too much like me, I’m afraid.”

Kozaburo looked away from Kiyoshi.

“Well, you and I do have a lot in common,” he said with a wry smile. “But in some ways we are completely different. And as I see it now, your way is probably right. Mr Mitarai, I am very glad to have met you. I had hoped to ask you to explain the current situation to my daughter for me, but I won’t be so selfish as to insist.”

He held out his right hand.

“There will be a much better person for her,” said Kiyoshi, shaking Kozaburo’s hand.

“You mean someone who loves money more than you do?”

“Maybe someone who will put it to a better purpose. You were one such person too, I believe?”

The brief handshake done, the two men stepped apart, never to come together again.

“You have a very soft hand. You’ve never done much in the way of hard work?”

Kiyoshi grinned.

“If you have no money to hold on to, your palm never gets rough.”

Standing in the exact same spot on the exact same hill it feels as if it happened yesterday.

Right now it’s late summer, or rather up here in the northern tip of Japan, it’s already more like autumn. The wind blows through the dry grass, which has not yet been hidden by the first snowfall of winter; the indigo-blue sea is not yet covered in ice.

That house of horrors that once had us in panic has now fallen into ruin; now home to nothing more than a few shed snakeskins and a whole lot of dust. Nobody visits, and nobody wants to live there.

No news ever reached us that Sasaki, or even Togai, was to be married to Eiko Hamamoto. Nor did we ever hear from Michio Kanai again. A note came in the mail addressed to Kiyoshi and myself to let us know that Kumi Aikura had opened a bar in Aoyama somewhere, but to this day neither one of us has dropped by.

In the end, Kiyoshi let on about a major aspect of the case. I feel it’s my duty to write it down here.

“Do you think it was purely to avenge his daughter’s death that Kohei Hayakawa hired Kazuya Ueda to kill Kikuoka?” he asked me one day out of the blue.

“Do you think there was some other reason?”

“I do.”

“What makes you think that?”

“Simple. If Kozaburo Hamamoto wanted to practise sliding icicles down the stairs, there’s no way he could have done it alone. For example, while he was in Room 3 adjusting the position of the noses on those Tengu masks, he’d have needed someone at the top of the stairs to let the icicle go. And who do you think used to help him?”

“Kohei Hayakawa?”

“Yes. There’s no one else it could have been. And so Hayakawa knew about his employer’s plan to kill Kikuoka. But he—”

“He wanted to stop him, so he hired Ueda to do it before Hamamoto could!”